Mon Feb 18, 2013 at 10:00:58 AM EST

Last week, a request was made by five members of the MDP's Executive Committee to have this weekend's convention run by a neutral party not involved in the state party chairman's race. Lon Johnson agreed to this almost immediately. Yesterday, Chad Selweski of the Macomb Daily reported that Brewer had also agreed. That is not the case. The following letter was sent to the people who'd made the request. This morning, the Brewer folks verified its accuracy.

I am responding to your e-mail received at 6 pm February 14, 2013.

I appreciate your concern with ensuring that we have a fair State Convention. I’m sure fairness was at the forefront of your mind when we adopted the rules and procedures on December 1, 2012 that govern the Convention, a meeting you presumably attended.

These rules and procedures, adopted unanimously by the Michigan Democratic State Central Committee, guarantee fairness to all. Moreover I’m confident the Chair and the members of the Executive Committee --- including yourselves --- selected by the MDSCC will serve capably in this role.

As you know, our party has never insisted that any party officer, Chair, Vice Chair or elected official resign from their post or step aside from their duties when a candidate has filed against them. At the time these rules were adopted, it was known I would be a candidate for MDP Chair. The rules were designed to ensure fairness then, and I’m confident they will work in the way you intended them on Feb. 23.

Moreover, as you know, any action of the rules and credentials committee, an advisory body, must be approved by the total delegate body of the state convention. No rules or resolutions or procedures or the chair of the convention can be imposed on that delegate body. That body is the sole determinant of the rules and procedures.

So I’m confident that we collectively as officers of the Party will deliver a fair recommendation to the Convention and if there are disagreements there is a process for working these out.

Sincerely,

Mark Brewer

P.S. As you know these rules were adopted because we do not have any of the new Congressional Districts until the date of the Convention.

1) What a lousy, lousy reporting job by Chad Selweski of the Macomb Daily. How did he come to report that Mark Brewer accepted the neutrality proposal? I hope he can explain. Mistakes happen but this seems really sloppy.

2)Speaking of mistakes. It seems to me that it is a mistake for Brewer to reject the neutrality proposal, incredibly dumb and accomplishes nothing to advance his cause unless he plans shenanigans over rules and credentials at the convention--a tactic that would almost certainly backfire. He should have taken the high road like Lon Johnson. But old habits die hard I guess.

There was a huge uptick in Party membership purchases before the deadline. Hopefully, that is because folks were really invigorated by the Obama results and thirty to beat back the RTW legislation et al. Maybe it was because the UAW is trying to buy a race (which is well within their rights to do under our Rules).

At any rate, with so many "new" members, credentials will be very important.

If they are in districts/counties already dominated by one side, under the proportional voting rules, extra bodies don't count for much. Also, the new memberships could well be from both sides, given the labor is split on this one.

But I imagine it would be hard to figure all that out in a few days, even if we had the data. I have been polling the Sixth District, and what I have been noticing is how unpredictable this race is, in terms of who is supporting whom. Young people are by no means uniformly backing Johnson, nor older folks Brewer. I have had several officers of locals in our district, out of a small sample (and who will remain nameless here), tell me that they were either voting for or considering a vote opposite to what their union is endorsing. And out of 34 people who I have confirmed are attending, 11 are still undecided, at least when I talked with them.

In mid to late January, I heard that there was a surge of membership. Anyone who has signed up new members at the local level knows that we are notorious for taking a long time sifting that out, with no implications involved at all. It just takes a long time to get the check cleared, processed in Lansing and a name on a membership list to appear.

Now, with many new names presumed to be joining for the Chair race, the process should be quite interesting. Add to that the fact that precinct delegates do not have to be members for 30 days to vote at the Convention, and we have all the making of great drama.

As you know, our party has never insisted that any party officer, Chair, Vice Chair or elected official resign from their post or step aside from their duties when a candidate has filed against them. At the time these rules were adopted, it was known I would be a candidate for MDP Chair. The rules were designed to ensure fairness then, and I'm confident they will work in the way you intended them on Feb. 23.

I don't think anyone has asked for any of the MDP officers to resign, at least not publicly. Its not unusual for elections to be conducted by an appointed committee or a presidium.

All the Strong arm tactics I've been seeing from the UAW, intimidating elected officials, and Club chairs, has been hilarious, in a bad way, because the UAW is really pushing for avoid a floor fight, everything I've heard from that keeps saying that mark should step down, so we can avoid a floor fight. Saturday going to be interesting indeed

What evidence do you have that they've been intimidating elected officials? Maybe club chairs because they have no leverage. Electeds should feel fairly safe being with the UAW as well as with MEA/SEIU/etc.

"Brewer supporters quickly countered with a press release announcing that seven of the nine Democrats on the Macomb County Board of Commissioners had endorsed the chairman. I'm told that, within minutes of that release going online, a UAW official called one of these commissioners and suggested that, if he didn't withdraw his endorsement, his buddy-buddy relationship with the union was over."

about 'tactics' is what people who are losing usually do. You don't think every single of these entities (unions on both sides of Brewer/Johnson, etc) don't do the same thing every time there's any vote of consequence in Lansing or elsewhere? C'mon!

Bernstein and Woodward confirmed information with multiple independent sources before they published. But the originating source had to have a good reason not to have their identity placed on the record - and the stories were carefully vetted by the editorial staff. Oh, and Bernstein and Woodward did not publish opinion columns masquerading as news.

And even after all that, Berstein and Woodward still got things wrong. Certainly it helped to have the Number Two in the FBI as "Deep Throat," but he was technically breaking the law when he fed information to the Washington Post. That was a good reason to stay off the record.

While Selweski makes "hay" over Johnson's code issues, he said nearly nothing about McGuinness' on the record accusation that Brewer was behind the Fake Tea Party.

Yesterday, Chad Selweski of the Macomb Daily reported that Brewer had also agreed. That is not the case. The following letter was sent to the people who'd made the request. This morning, the Brewer folks verified its accuracy.

Your evidence is based on unsourced information from not only the same reporter, but the same article, that is being contradicted in this post. As such, the evidence has zero credibility.

"I'm told that, within minutes of that release going online, a UAW official called one of these commissioners and suggested that, if he didn't withdraw his endorsement, his buddy-buddy relationship with the union was over."

Implied he has a source, for this quote, and no he doesn't have to to tell who that sources is.

As you are making an assertion (namely that the UAW is using strong arm tactics), the burden is on you to provide evidence in support of such an assertion. As the source of your information is of questionable veracity based on his writing things that we know to be untrue on the subject under discussion. Thus, we are disinclined to accept anything else he writes on the subject as true without it being backed up from another, more credible source.

Now, I would be making a logical fallacy (namely an argument from fallacy) if I said that since Selweski was wrong about the neutral party question, that means that the UAW is not using strong arm tactics. That is not the case. Indeed, I would not be remotely surprised if they were. However, a vague statement from Selweski is not going to lead me to conclude that they are.

While a commenter on a blog is again questionable corroboration, I did my own research and am indeed willing to accept that the UAW is using what amounts to strong arm tactics in support of Johnson.

Regardless, my comments were based on your evidence, not what other people provided. Also, for the record, I don't really have much of a preference as to who wins this. I view it as an incompetent chair running against someone I know little about who is backed by the equally incompetent UAW. And I'm not a member of the MDP, so I have no say in the matter anyway.

I am curious how many votes there are for the Convention and what the proportion is for each county. Not that I'm asking anyone to stop doing their paying job to figure this out for me, but if someone has it handy (I'm assuming its a useful tally in some quarters 'bout now), it would be a nice public service for us junkies. Thanks.

It included the new county SADV (State Allocation of Delegate Vote), which is still based on the 2010 Secretary of State vote, but updated for Congressional District redistricting changes. I think I will need to cut this in pieces:

...that folks you would expect to be voting one way based on their union affiliation are not necessarily doing so. And I have hard evidence that County Chair endorsements are not having any significant influence on the votes from those counties.

You can expect that a county's vote will line up IF that County PARTY has endorsed, because that is based on an actual vote, many of the same people being the attendees at the Convention. But only a handful of counties have endorsed: Genesee, Iosco, and Kalkaska for Lon, Grand Traverse, Macomb and Montcalm for Mark. And members there are still free to vote their conscience, but you can expect a majority to go in the indicated direction.

I know that some folks respect and wait for the Justice Caucus endorsement. That is the group I am affiliated with.

More will listen to the MDP Black Caucus, which has gone for Lon.

I don't think individual endorsements of legislators, former legislators, party leaders, etc. count for much. In any case, they are lined up on both sides, all the Congressionals and more state legislators with Lon, more Party leaders with Mark.

The bottom line is that for the most part, a deciding plurality of delegates are slow in making up their minds, and I believe it will come down to whether they think Lon can deliver, based on his background -- or not.

People - especially you newbies - STOP troll-rating posts that aren't troll posts. There are very, very few times when a 1 or 0 should ever be used. Whether you agree with the other person or not, you shouldn't be absuing the ratings system. I don't think people understand that these ratings have real-time consequences on the forum. Too many low ratings, and the comments get hidden.

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The Democratic Party is organized, in Wayne County only, by Congressional district. As far as I know, there simply is no such entity as "the Wayne County Democratic Party". It has no officers, doesn't meet, has no legal status, and doesn't caucus.

All those functions - in Wayne County only - are handled by CD committees, which do NOT include the portion of the district outside Wayne.

This structure is set up in state law, and dates back to the time Wayne was almost half the entire state.